This book provides a unique insight into the latest breakthroughs in a consistent manner, at a level accessible to undergraduates, yet with enough attention to the theory and computation to satisfy the professional researcher Statistical physics addresses the study and understanding of systems with many degrees of freedom. As such it has a rich and varied history, with applications to thermodynamics, magnetic phase transitions, and order/disorder transformations, to name just a few. However, the tools of statistical physics can be profitably used to investigate any system with a large number of components. Thus, recent years have seen these methods applied in many unexpected directions, three of which are the main focus of this volume. These applications have been remarkably successful and have enriched the financial, biological, and engineering literature. Although reported in the physics literature, the results tend to be scattered and the underlying unity of the field overlooked.

Epitaxial growth lies at the heart of a wide range of industrial and technological applications. Recent breakthroughs, experimental and theoretical, allow actual atom-by-atom manipulation and an understanding of such processes, opening up a totally new area of unprecedented nanostructuring.

The contributions to Atomistic Aspects of Epitaxial Growth are divided into five main sections, taking the reader from the atomistic details of surface diffusion to the macroscopic description of epitaxial systems. many of the papers contain substantial background material on theoretical and experimental methods, making the book suitable for both graduate students as a supplementary text in a course on epitaxial phenomena, and for professionals in the field.

Epitaxial growth lies at the heart of a wide range of industrial and technological applications. Recent breakthroughs, experimental and theoretical, allow actual atom-by-atom manipulation and an understanding of such processes, opening up a totally new area of unprecedented nanostructuring.

The contributions to Atomistic Aspects of Epitaxial Growth are divided into five main sections, taking the reader from the atomistic details of surface diffusion to the macroscopic description of epitaxial systems. many of the papers contain substantial background material on theoretical and experimental methods, making the book suitable for both graduate students as a supplementary text in a course on epitaxial phenomena, and for professionals in the field.

The exploding market of information technology requires ultrahigh-speed integrated circuits, which imposes formidable challenges in terms of nanofabrication, advanced materials, atomic-scale measurements and modeling. The enormous costs of next-generation lithographic machines to mass produce integrated circuits with sub-100nm resolution justify alternative approaches where the use of advanced materials and techniques for nanofabrication, including epitaxial growth and their powerful modeling, can lead to more cost-effective strategies. This book contains the proceedings of two symposia held at the 1999 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston that address these issues - Advanced Materials and Techniques for Nanolithography, and Atomic-Scale Measurements and Atomistic Models of Epitaxial Growth and Lithography. The reader will find an overview of the state of the art, both theoretical and experimental in this technologically important field. Topics include: advanced techniques for sub-100nm resolution lithography and molecular electronics; epitaxial growth and morphology; novel concepts of resists for nanolithography; atomic-scale characterization and measurement; modeling and atomistic simulations; and nanodevices and nanostructures.